Your work:
- Argue against the argument below.
- Please appeal to Kant’s or/and Utilitarian claims (learned from your readings and class discussions) to support your points.
- Please argue against the argument provided to you, regardless of what you really think about the death penalty (please do not offer any support for the death penalty).
a) If you argue against the argument below without any appeal to Kant’s and Utilitarian principles, you will not get a full credit for your work.
b) If you argue against the death penalty problem in general, instead of debating the argument below, you will not get a full credit for your work.
Pro Death Penalty Argument (Retentionist Argument):
Premise 1) If we keep the death penalty, we run the risk of needlessly eradicating the
lives of convicted murderers who might have been reformable (correctable).
Premise 2) If we abolish the death penalty we run the risk of some innocent people
becoming future victims of the murderers (for example, the prison guards).
Premise 3) Whether we choose to keep the death penalty or abolish it, there is a risk
that some human lives will be needlessly lost.
Premise 4) We have no right to risk (endanger) lives of the innocent people.
Conclusion 5) Therefore, it is our moral obligation to retain (keep) the death penalty.
Readings from
Shafer-Landau, Russ.The Fundamentals of Ethics, Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford University Press. (2009) 89-102.